After importing the model into Maya go to Hypershade and create a new Blinn material. In the Attribute editor (Ctrl + A, or double click on material) change the color to a dark color. This kind of material is nice for the early modeling stage because it shows the silhouette well and, at the same time, you can see the hard edges of the topology (Fig.14).

Fig.14

I also deleted the left side of the model and made it a Duplicate special (in the Edit menu), but before doing that be sure that the model's pivot and model is located at the center of the grid. You will be forced to edit the pivot position often. To do this press and hold X to activate Snap to Grid mode and move the pivot to the cross (press Insert to exit this mode) then apply a Freeze Transformation to the model (Modify menu) (Fig.15).

Fig. 15

During this stage I keep in mind two things: silhouette and topology. The silhouette is a very important thing for 3D characters. It's like the foundation for a future house and it has to be strong. I put topology in second place because in the block-out stage it's not very important, but you still need to be moderate and make sure you don't add too many polygons. When you finish the block-out you'll need to pay more attention to topology (Fig.16).